Hide All Desktop Icons in Mac OS X

Desktop icon clutter can really impact workflow by overwhelming you with files and just too much stuff to look at. Inevitably, it can be hard to avoid since a lot of apps download things to the Desktop by default, we save things there, screenshots go there, it quickly becomes the generic catch-all location for documents and stuff that we’re working with.

If you decide you have too many icons on the desktop and maintaining the desktop is just too much to deal with, you can actually toggle a secret setting in Mac OS X to turn off the desktop icons completely, thereby preventing them from being displayed at all. This effectively hides all the icons from showing up on the desktop only, but all of your files and stuff will still be accessible from elsewhere. You can think of this kind of like disabling the desktop, because you can still actually save files and folders to the desktop, it’s just that the icons will not show up.

How to Hide Desktop Icons on Mac OS X from Appearing Completely

Launch Terminal, found within /Applications/Utilities, and type the following defaults command string:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false

After hitting enter, you will then need to kill the Finder so that it relaunches and the changes take effect:

killall Finder

Once the command is executed, icons will instantly disappear – the files will still exist, they are just no longer visible on the desktop.

This trick works the exact same in all versions of OS X, from Snow Leopard to OS X Yosemite. In fact, you can expedite the hiding of hte desktop icons on the Mac by turning the command string into a single line to be copied and pasted into the Terminal window, like this:

The desktop will no longer display icons, effectively hiding them from appearing. All of the files still exist, but they’re now discretely hidden in your home folder’s “Desktop” directory rather than cluttering up the visible desktop. If you’re wondering what this looks like when it’s in effect, it’s basically a super-clean desktop like this:

Notice how there is literally nothing on the desktop? Just a clean image of the background wallpaper? That’s what this trick does.

Note that this process is different than simply hiding things like Mac hard drive icons and network shares from showing up on desktop, because this trick is all inclusive and hides every single icon regardless of what it is, completely preventing them from appearing on the OS X Desktop whatsoever, despite still technically being stored in the users ~/Desktop directory. It’s obviously easy to implement, and it’s also easy to reverse if you decide the feature isn’t for you and you want to see everything visible as usual again.

So to be perfectly clear, this will hide your icons from showing on the Desktop by disabling that feature, but your desktop data, files, folders, and everything else is still available by manually going to the “~/Desktop” folder of the user account.

How to Show Desktop Icons Again in Mac OS X

To show the Desktop icons again, open the Mac Terminal and type the following defaults command, notice the only difference is ‘false’ has been turned into ‘true’, thereby re-enabling desktop icon display:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true

Again, kill the Finder and your icons will show on the desktop as usual:

killall Finder

Finder will relaunch, and the desktop will be revealed again with all of it’s icons shown. The image below shows an exaggerated example, with tons and tons of icons sitting on the wallpaper:

Similar to the hiding trick, you can condense those commands into a single command string to reveal the desktop icons again.

This even gives you a nice auditory clue announcing the state of the icons (icons hidden, or icons visible).

Other than being a nuisance to look at, desktop clutter can actually slow down a Mac (or any computer, for that matter), since each individual icon and thumbnail must be drawn by the operating system anytime the desktop is accessed or shown. As a result, every single file sitting on the desktop takes up a little slice of memory, and redrawing the thumbnail icons uses a tiny bit of CPU, but with hundreds of files laying about those will accumulate to a significant burden on the computers resources, thereby slowing down the computer. This is particularly true with old Macs, but it applies to newer models as well.

So when in doubt, keep that desktop tidy and free of too many icons, or just hide the icons and files display like we described here so that you can gain a nice little speed boost until you sort through your files.

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54 Comments

The other day I installed a new application called Berokyo and now I have no icons in my desktop and everything is organized in a beautiful virtual multi-shelf cabinet. The application is a Staff Pick at apple.com.

The problem with that is, the icons are still there and taking up memory.. Camouflage just sets your wall paper to float on top (like you can set a music player, say).

You can test it by setting a much smaller wallpaper than your screen size and then toggling Camouflage on & off; the smaller picture is in a sea of icons, and merely drifts in front of the icons it covers, and the back behind them as you toggle “off.” The surrounding icons haven’t moved, and therefore nothing on the desktop has moved.

Basically its purpose is aesthetic, which would be fine– but doesn’t do the functional work of taking all that media off of your computers mind.

Maybe I’m just an old-school unix guy, but I don’t understand while everybody is mentioning all these memory grabby apps when this command line solution is simple, elegant and most importantly, doesn’t need to be loaded into memory everytime for it to work!! Great Post!!

I first ran the false line and then the true to restore the icons; however, the Macintosh HD icon no longer appears in the “Desktop” folder even though the icon for it does appear on the Desktop. I try to drag it directly to the Desktop folder, but it does not appear there, sometimes creating an alias in an adjacent folder. I have gone to Finder>Preferences and checked and unchecked the HD boxes and relaunched Finder to no avail.

How can I get the Macintosh HD icon to reappear in the Desktop folder in the Finder despite it reappearing on the desktop?

Thank you. When I ran the migration assistant from our old Tiger iMac to the new Snow Leopard iMac, my daughter’s desktop was not showing icons. Using the second option (-bool true) worked like a champ.

[…] and dock. Of course if you’re on the other end of the spectrum and you hate icons you can hide all desktop icons in Mac OS X, but that’s not the purpose of this article. You are here for great icons, so if you too are […]

I spent a lot of time organizing icon layout in various folders, over the years…
only to have OSX destroy these organization for no good reason, once in a while.
The last time was when I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.6.2.

I would pay for a way to freeze icons in a given position, chosen by me of course.
I have tried saving copies of the .DS_Store files for a few important directories; sometimes copying that back onto the .DS_Store files restores the layout. But not
always. I just don’t understand the .DS_Store laws. Why can’t I decide where I want my icons to be? This is MY computer, not Apple’s! This unrequested shuffling of icons drives me nuts.

I recently got a new macbook pro and after downloading msn for mac i realized it left behind desktop icons that i really would rather not have there. I came across this webpage and maybe im just doing it wrong (?) but its not hiding anything for me and im scared to try anything else because as this is my first mac i am afraid to screw something up royally (im not very familiar with it yet).. if anyone has any ideas help would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance ~ K

[…] not interested in downloading a third party tool that does this for you, you can also manually hide all icons from the Mac desktop by using the command line defaults tool. This will force the desktop to display no icons at all. […]

I had a problem with my desktop, it wouldn’t let me click or show anything on it… So I tired the terminal code “defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true”
Then typed “killall Finder”
Then suddenly everything was back
THANK YOU :)

FYI
I just came here looking for the answer to this question for Lion, and just discovered its a moot point.
1. In Lion, you can not show drives on desktop
2. You can move all your desktop files to another place
3. Clean desktop.

I love this command, thank you. I have used it since Lion and I started seeing a strange behavior the last few weeks since a Mountain Lion update and this is the only thing I can think of that causes it. I am curious if anyone else has seen it.

If I have a desktop that has no windows on it, when I use a gesture to switch to that desktop, the desktop will snap back to the last desktop I was on.

I just tested it and used the command to show the desktop icons again and the snap back is no longer happening.